O Night, Night! Poems by Leathe Colvert Hemachandra in The Messenger

A decade ago I published a piece about my grandmother, Leathe Hemachandra, and some of her poetry. I was pleased to discover more poems from Leathe this month in the African American Poetry Digital Anthology.

These poems were originally published in The Messenger, a Black political—Socialist, really—and then literary magazine. The Messenger was published from 1917 to 1928. It was founded by civil rights activist and labor leader A. Philip Randolph and writer Chandler Owen. Its original tagline was “The Only Radical Negro Magazine in America.” Then it at least partly transformed into more of a literary magazine about Black culture—a later tag was “World’s Greatest Negro Monthly.”

Born in 1900, Leathe Colvert turned 24 years old in the year (1924) when the five issues of The Messenger that included her work published. Her son—my father, Neal—was born in 1930. My grandmother died 14 years before I was born, and my father died when I was 5 years old. Discoveries like these poems are especially powerful and moving for me in that context.

The African American Poetry Digital Anthology’s index of poems that were published in The Messenger indicates my grandmother and another poet, Ann Lawrence (or Ann Lawrence-Lucas), tied for having the third most poems published in the magazine, after Langston Hughes and Georgia Douglas Johnson. But I’ve found one more poem—”Discovery”—within the anthology written by Leathe for The Messenger. I begin with it below.

I wish I knew and could tell more about this story—of Leathe writing for this magazine, which has an important legacy in Black American history—and more about Leathe’s story more broadly.

But, even in those stories’ limitations and absence, I am happy to discover and share with you seven more poems from my grandmother.

Discovery

I have found thee in the soft shadows of twilight
When the stars blink sleepily
At the glowing, defiant Sun-King
Who sinks slowly, reluctantly
Behind the craggy hill tops.
I have heard thee in the still
Silence of early morning
When the new day creeps stealthily
Out of oblivion, to gaze on
Black spires, snorting smoke-stacks
Bent and tired workers.

Published in The Messenger, June 1924

Drones

Streams of them pour out incessantly
From dismal hovels;
Blank expressioned, mutely pleading
For strength to bear their weazened frames
Forth to their prisons and back to their huts:
But they are drones, only drones—
So it matters not.

Published in The Messenger, May 1924

Question

I wonder if the stars ever tire of
Watching broken-hearted beings,
Crushed flowers or weeping children,
Or does their brilliance make them blind?

Published in The Messenger, April 1924

A Rainy Day

A rainy day is an eerie day
When elfins skip blithely o’er puddles and pools,
But mere human folk plod sulkily
Wishing for sunny days
When the rust’s off the tools.

Published in The Messenger, June 1924

Ternebre

The trees are sighing and swaying
In mournful rhythm
To the moaning melodies
Of the comfortless wind.
Low and uncertain their dirge continues
In awful persistence
For those who are dying tonight.

Published in The Messenger, April 1924

Tom

Your smile is like a misty day,
Mysterious, enchanting, alluring.
Your voice is like a gentle rain,
Refreshing, enticing and soothing.

Published in The Messenger, April 1924

Weary

I no longer crave for beauty,
What there was in me that craved is dead.
And now I move among the flowers
Insensate, waiting to hear her call.

Published in The Messenger, July 1924

Night

O, fathomless pall that enshrouds me,
O, infinite power that binds me.
I cannot escape thee,
O night, night!
My spirit submits to thee,
My soul cries out to thee,
Thy power enslaveth me,
O night, night!
I search for some solace of woes,
I seek for calm and repose,
Thy mystic murmurs console me,
O night, night!